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The SCITS Song sings on after 60 years

Allison Rowell stands on Wednesday January 27, 2016 in Sarnia, Ont., in front of Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School. As a student in the 1950s, Rowell wrote The SCITS Song. (Paul Morden, The Observer)

Allison Rowell has written only one song in her long musical life, but my oh my was it a hit.

She was a student at Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School (SCITS), the city's high school on Wellington Street, in the early 1950s when then music teacher Herman Sperling organized a contest for a school song.

“So, I took a crack at it,” said Rowell, who studied piano, accompanied singers at school, and sang in its choirs and choruses.

“I don't know how many entries there were, but anyway, I was the winner.”

There was no prize, she recalled, other than the honour of being selected the winner.

“I was thrilled.”

TheSCITS Song is still part of life at the school six decades later, which Rowell said leaves her feeling “totally amazed.”

Chitra Dath-McLellan, music teacher at the school, said the song is performed by student bands, in music classes, and at student gatherings.

“The kids play it at just about every event,” she said.

“Everyone in the school knows the words.”

New students are introduced to the song at the first pep rally of the year, learning the words that have been painted on two giant bed sheets that are taken up on stage, Dath-McLellan said.

The school's website also has a copy of the sheet music, as well as a link to download a phone ring tone of the song.

“It's got a pretty nifty tune,” Dath-McLellan said.

“It sounds very much like a marching band, epic fanfare.”

She has taught at the school for 19 years, and attended as a student where she first learned the song in Grade 9.

“Alumni come back to teach here,” said Dath-McLellan.

“We love it here. We come back to continue the traditions, and the feeling of love that's in the building.”

Several years ago, the words to the song were painted on a large poster by a graduating class and attached it to a wall on the first floor, next to a math classroom, in honour of Laurie Fillion, a former teacher who led singing of the song for more than three decades.

When the school celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1997, Rowell was invited back to lead an auditorium full of alumni singing the song.

“They just about lifted the roof that night,” she recalled.

Rowell graduated from SCITS in 1954, and after taking a special commercial course, began a working life that continued until she retired from Nova Chemicals.

“It was a great school,” she said.

“There seemed to be a program for any youngster,” with training for those aiming for a trade, higher education or commercial and office work, Rowell said.

Declining enrolment and shrinking provincial funding prompted administrators at the Lambton Kent District School Board in November to propose that the SCIT building close, with its students moving into renovated quarters at the St. Clair Secondary School building on Murphy Road.

That option is being reviewed by a committee, with trustees expected to make a final decision in April.

If the plan goes ahead, SCITS could be empty by 2017.

That would leave the school five years shy of celebrating 100 years of contribution to the life of Sarnia.

“I think it's a very big loss,” Rowell said about the possibility the school may close.

SCITS opened on Wellington Street in 1922. The three-storey building was constructed at a cost of approximately $600,000, with technical shops, science labs, an indoor pool and an auditorium, leading the community to boast that its high school was second to none in the province.

“The architecture is quite wonderful,” Rowell said.

“Today, to put something like that up, you just couldn't do it.”

In particular, she spoke about the large auditorium that has been the home of concerts and community events, including performances by the former Polysar Glee Club that she was a member of.

It was also used at times by the Sarnia Concert Association and the International Symphony, an organization Rowell serves as a board member.

Along with the glee club, Rowell sang in community choral groups in the years after graduating from high school, and she still plays piano today, “for my own pleasure.”

But, she said she never made another attempt at songwriting after The SCITS Song.